The Scripture does not only command us to do certain activites. We are also commanded to feel certain emotions. Thus an emotion-less obedience is not in fact full obedience. God calls us to follow and obey him with our entire selves – all of our bodily, sensory, emotional, spiritual, and relational existence. This might seem unreasonable, as we all know it is impossible to simply turn our emotions on and off. The Bible does not call us to look like we have emotions, but to actually have them. Such requires more than will-power, but the opening of our hearts to God in a process of thorough-going transformation and restoration. In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis describes the process of Christian transformation aptly:

“When Jesus said ‘be holy,’ He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder—in fact it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”

While this might seem incredibly overwhelming, it is actually remarkable good news. From this we know that the religion we call Christianity is not simply about behavior modification or straight-jacketing your passions in order to conform to a behavioral norm. Rather, God would say that your passions are too weak, they are too easily satisfied, and Christianity calls you not merely to acquire this or that activity, but to have full liberation of the heart and body to fully flow and function in the manner God intended for humanity in creation. To be fully alive and fully human is at the heart of true Christianity.

The following is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but simply to show some of the extent to which God calls, indeed, commands us not only to do, but to feel.

(1)    Joy—Philippians 4:4 – “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again rejoice!” (also Psalm 100:2; 1 Thessalonians 5:16; Romans 12:8, 12, 15)

(2)    Love from the heart—1 Peter 1:22 – “Love one another deeply, from the heart” (also  Romans 12:10)

(3)    Hope— Psalm 42:5 – “Hope in God…” (also 1 Peter 1:13)

(4)    Fear—Luke 12:5 – “Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell.” (also Romans 11:20; 1 Peter 1:17)

(5)    Peace—Colossians 3:15 – “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts…”

(6)    Forgiveness from the heart—Matthew 18:35 – “This is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.” (also Leviticus 19:17-18; Colossians 3:13)

(7)   Zeal—Romans 12:11 – “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.”

(8)    Grief—Romans 12:15 – “…weep with those who weep [sharing others’ grief]” (also James 4:9)

(9)    Desire—1 Peter 2:2 – “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation.” (also 1 Corinthians 12:31, 14:1)

(10)  Tenderheartedness—Ephesians 4:32 – “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted…” (also 1 Peter 3:8)

(11)  Brokenness and contrition—Psalm 51:17 – “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (also James 4:9)

(12)  Gratitude— Colossians 2:6-7 – “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in Him…overflowing with thanksgiving.” (also Ephesians 5:20; Colossians 3:17)

(13)  Contentment—Hebrews 13:5 – “be content with what you have” (also Exodus 20:17)

(14)  Patience—1 Thessalonians 5:14 – “be patient with everyone.” (Also Colossians 3:12)

(15)  Kindness—Micah 6:8 – “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love (love, not just do) kindness.”

(16)  Compassion—Colossians 3:12 – “…clothe yourselves with compassion…”

(17)  Sympathy—1 Peter 3:8 – “Finally, all of you, have…sympathy…”

(18)  Cheerful giving—2 Corinthians 9:7 – “Each one should give…not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

(19)  Courage (do not fear)—Deuteronomy 31:6 “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified.” (also Deuteronomy 31:7, 23; Joshua 1:6- 9, 18; 10:25; 1 Chronicles 22:13; 1 Corinthians 16:13)

(20)  Confidence (do not worry)—Matthew 6:25 – “Do not worry about your life…”

(21)   Awe—Ecclesiastes 5:7 – “Therefore stand in awe of God.”

(22)  Hate – Psalm 97:10 – “O you who love the LORD, hate evil!”; Romans 12:9 – “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” (also Amos 5:15)

(23)  Do not hate – Leviticus 19:17-18 – “You shall not hate your brother in your heart…You bear a grudge against anyone of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.” (also 1 John 2:9, 11; 3:15)

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After a lengthy google search, I managed to discover one Protestant church in the greater Kansas City area was having an Ascension Day service last Thursday. Overjoyed at finding my quarry, I happily drove the 20+ minutes to attend this service. Including myself and the other person who came with me, there were five people in attendance, including one person who arrived half way through. I guess this means that in Kansas City, approximately 4.5 Protestants celebrated Ascension Day this year. I wonder if this is an all time record low since the founding of Kansas City. Suffice to say, celebrating the Ascension of Jesus is not high on the priority list, let alone on the radar screen of the Protestant Church at large.

But why should it? The Ascension is one of those topics that seems to have slipped off the general theological grid in contemporary Christianity (nevermind the Presentation or Transfiguration). Both the ascension and session (“being seated at the right hand of the Father”) of Jesus are given prominent places in both the Apostles’ and Nicene Creed (indeed, considering what is NOT said in the creeds, being mentioned at all is a place of prominence). The early church apparently considered the Ascension to be a critical component of true Christian faith. However, perusing through one of the most popular evangelical systematic theology books in print at present, the Ascension is squashed into the end of the chapter on the resurrection. In fact, the topics of providence, miracles, angels, satan and demons, the di/trichotomy of human nature, election and reprobation and the intermediate state EACH receive more coverage than the resurrection and ascension combined, though the early church didn’t perceive any of those topics to be crucial enough to be included in the creeds.

I am gathering that Ascension Day has come to such a low place of recognition because in the average evangelical consciousness, the possible meaning for the ascension is rather opaque. Perhaps, if at all, it is endowed with a negative meaning - Jesus is no longer with us in person. We are alone to do what he told us to do until he finally comes back. I hope in the following to merely in outline, amend this theological lacuna, which turns out to be significantly more practical and pastoral than one at first might imagine.

1) The Ascension means Jesus is the world’s true Lord.

The grand prayer in Ephesians 1 culminates with the statement that after God raised Jesus from the dead, he “seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places,   far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.” To be in heaven is not to be “out-of-sight out-of-mind.” Rather, heaven in the Bible is thought of as the “control center” for the earth (cf. the parallelism in 2 Chr. 20:6; Job 38:33; Ps. 103:19). For Jesus to be seated in heaven, means that he is the world’s true lord and king over all.

2) The Ascension means heaven and earth are not as far apart as we might have thought.

It is funny how the way we think is often opposite to the way reality works. When we think of the ascension, we think of Jesus going away and not being with us. The exact opposite is expressed in Matthew 28. While this passage does not explicitly mention the ascension, it bears several features in common with the end of Luke and the beginning of Acts including Jesus taking his disciples to a mountain, teaching them and commissioning them to spread the gospel. It is not a stretch to think that they were the same event (though it technically doesn’t matter for what I am about to say). It is precisely here that he gives the promise, “I am with you always even to the end of the age.” How can Jesus ascend to heaven and be with us always? It is commonly assumed that this promise refers to the Holy Spirit. But what about the 10 days in between the ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit? Where those days exempted from “always.” The only way this can be true is if Jesus can be “in heaven” and with us at the same time. My sense is that this promise implies something that we as contemporary Christians often fail to grasp – that early Judaism conceived of heaven and earth, not as discrete locations a long way off from each other – but as two overlapping and interlocking dimensions of God’s created world. Think about this one the next time you are shouting at God “up in heaven.”

3) The Ascension means that the restoration of the full destiny of humanity and the entire earth is not as far off as we might have thought.

Hebrews 2 quotes Psalm 8 in saying “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them. You have made them a little lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor, subjecting all things under their feet.” The Psalmist’s awe at God’s consideration of humankind has less to do with “feeling good about yourself” as much as it does with the role and destiny God gave human beings of ruling the earth (cf. Gen. 1). It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if humans are ruling the world, they are doing a terrible job, but more so it seems like the world is completely out of the control of humans. Lots of people seem desirous to do things right, whether in personal, familial, local, national or global contexts, be we can never seem to get it right, and often make matters worse either by our incompetence or intention.

The author to the Hebrews agrees with this in quite an understatement – “As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them (meaning humans).” He goes on to say, “but we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone.” How precisely is this an answer to the problem that God gave humans rulership over the earth, and as of yet it is completely out of control, full of death, decay and despair?  Because, Jesus as a human has been exalted to the heavens, he now sits in a place of rulership over the earth. Though we do not yet see the earth under the gracious rulership of humans intended by God, there is one human who has gone before the rest and is currently, as a token, fulfilling the destiny of the human race – Jesus the Messiah. The ascension of Jesus tells us that the restoration of humanity’s destiny — wherein our propensity towards destroying the creation would be healed and we exercise co-regency with God in establishing a gracious reign of justice, peace and life on earth — has begun in Jesus.

4) The Ascension means that we are to exercise this authority NOW

“But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—  and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…” (Ephesians 2:3-6)

Apparently heaven and earth are not that far apart considering we can be in both places at once! I won’t try to explain exactly what I think this means now, but the immediate meaning is apparent – the authority that Jesus has at the right hand of the Father, we partake with him in the present. Jesus’ rule over the universe is something he already is sharing with those who are “in the Messiah.” The justice, peace, life and joy of the age to come is not something we are simply to wait for – it is something we have both the authority and responsibility to implement now. So much for the easy Christian life – we’ve got work to do!

Almighty God, who did raise your beloved Son from the dead and seated him at your right hand, so now restore your people from the mire of Death’s hold and the darkness of Sin’s night, that the light of his gracious rule might shine through our lives, growing brighter and brighter until the fullness of day, through Jesus the Messiah our Lord…

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“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.  2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus the Messiah has come in the flesh is from God;  3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the anti-messiah, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.” 1 John 4:1-3

These words from the apostle John are very strange to us. He seems to be establishing a litmus test to aid in discernment of whether or not something was of God. If evangelical Christians were in charge of writing this section of John we would probably have written that every spirit that does not confess that Jesus is divine is not from God. Something is Christian if it maintains Jesus’ status as fully God. Though true, this is not what John is emphasizing in this passage. In our zeal to defend the divinity of Jesus, which we should, at times we have lost sight of the significance of Jesus’ humanity. To John, the spirit that does not confess Jesus as fully human is not from God and is indeed the spirit of anti-messiah. This type of speech makes no sense for modern Christians who have too neatly split their constitution into a body and a soul, the soul being that which is obviously more important. I’ve spoken to many people who simply cannot identify with their bodies and insist that the “I,” “me,” or “self” is the soul living “inside” the body. Once establishing this type of strict dualism one is only a small step from denigrating the role of the body to an extreme. If the soul is the real me, if I am in essence a spirit-being, then my body is simply a shell that in actuality hinders the life of my soul. Salvation then becomes freedom from bodily, physical existence – a freedom from the earth to heaven. This type of logic is what John calls the “spirit of anti-messiah” and is commonly associated with the heresy called gnosticism. Biblical Christianity always asserts that “I” am the cojoining of body and soul. My body is not a possession of mine as if it were external to me. I do not “have” a body, I am a body.

Antichrist is a commonly misunderstood term. Modern use of the prefix “anti” means “opposed to” or “against.” However, this is not what the prefix meant in first century Koine Greek. Rather it means more along the lines of “instead of.” It implies not the idea of fierce opposition but substitution. The spirit of antichrist is not necessarily vociferously against Jesus but attempts to furnish a replacement Messiah. The Jesus without his physical body is not the Messiah. Even common language can be confusing. The term “incarnation” literally means in-fleshed. This can give the impression that Jesus is the “soul” and he went into a body.

This is not what the Bible says however. John 1:14 tells us that “the Word became flesh.” Jesus did enter a human, he became a human. He did not get a body, he became a body. A cursory reading of Colossians 2:9 could also be easily distorted: “For in Him (Jesus) all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form.” The fullness of deity does not dwell in a body, but in bodily form, in other words the fulness of deity exists as a body. Again in Philippians 2, Paul says Jesus was “made in human likeness.” Jesus became something rather than merely indwelling a body. This is also affirmed by the historic creeds of the church. The Nicene creed proclaims that “by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became human.” Note the wording carefully: Jesus himself, not simply his body was born of the Virgin Mary. He himself became human.

The spirit of antichrist is that which does not confess (or denies) that Jesus has indeed come as a full human being. As George McDonald has said, in doing so Jesus has “forever hallowed the flesh.” The Athanasian creed (ca. 5th century) confesses that by the incarnation humanity was taken up into God’s own God-hood. In other words, the human body itself has been given an indescribable dignity beyond recognition. One would think that creation in the image of God was enough to afford respect to humanity, but furthermore has God glorified us in taking our own form into the divine fellowship of the Trinity. The spirit of antichrist seeks to replace this view of Jesus and its requisite view of humanity and the human body. The spirit of antichrist sees the human body as something so full of indignity that the divine cannot possibly take it on. Full blown forms will assert Jesus’ body to be an illusion while more insipid forms will see the body as simply a shell for the soul of divinity. The Spirit of God brings a radically different message of a God who does not scorn the flesh but draws near in the fullest manner possible, being made like us in every way (Hebrews 2:17) and thus declaring that human flesh is indeed worthy of partaking of the divine.

The implications of this are tremendous, and to them I will turn in a later post…

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